Brussels or Bruges first? What we'd do differently
On our first trip to Belgium, we did it the way most people seem to: a couple of nights in Bruges first, then on to Brussels. It was lovely. But with hindsight, we’d flip the order — and base ourselves differently entirely.
Why Bruges-first set us up to be disappointed
Bruges is instantly, almost absurdly beautiful — canals, the Belfry, cobbled lanes, the lot. It charms you in about ten minutes. The problem is that it then sets a “fairy-tale postcard” bar that Brussels, on first glance, doesn’t clear. We arrived in Brussels straight from Bruges, took one look at the (admittedly small) tourist core and the underwhelming Manneken-Pis, and thought “…this is the capital?”
It took us a full day to realise we’d misjudged it.
The mechanics of this disappointment are worth understanding. Bruges is a preserved medieval city of around 120,000 people that happens to look like a film set — every canal, every gabled house, every cobbled alley feeds the same aesthetic. It’s coherent, concentrated, and operates almost entirely on visual impact. You don’t need to work for it; it lands on you immediately.
Brussels is a real, messy, multilingual capital of over a million people. Its tourist centre — the Grand-Place, Manneken-Pis, the immediate surroundings — is a small and not especially representative sample of the whole. Coming off Bruges, you see that core and measure it against what you just left, and it fails the comparison immediately. This is unfair to Brussels, but entirely predictable.
What we missed at first
Brussels doesn’t perform for you the way Bruges does. Its best bits — the Art Nouveau districts, the comic murals, the food in Sainte-Catherine and Dansaert, the lambic beer — sit just outside the tourist sightline and take a day or two to find (is Brussels worth it?). Once we found them, we loved it more than Bruges. But coming straight off Bruges’ instant beauty, we nearly wrote it off.
By the second day in Brussels we’d found Saint-Gilles — the Art Nouveau streets that would be tourist attractions in any other city but here are just a residential neighbourhood people walk to work through. We’d found the Tintin mural and spent a whole morning following the comic trail through the lower town. We’d found Cantillon and drunk gueuze where it’s made. We’d eaten moules in Sainte-Catherine and been to Dansaert for a natural wine and small plates. By that second evening, Brussels had won us over completely. But it had taken effort and time — neither of which you have if you arrive pre-conditioned by Bruges and pre-disappointed.
The city’s eccentricity is also an acquired taste that Bruges doesn’t prepare you for. Brussels is a place that puts a comic-strip character on a fire escape, names a beer café “sudden death,” and elected a giant peeing statue as its emblem. It has a dry, self-deprecating sense of humour that’s specifically Belgian and takes a day to tune into. Come from Bruges, where the selling point is pure medieval beauty, and Brussels’ irreverence can read as lack of confidence. Which it isn’t.
What we’d do now
Two things:
- Base in Brussels, day-trip to Bruges — not the other way round. Brussels is central, so Bruges (and Ghent, and Antwerp) are easy one-hour returns (Brussels vs Bruges). One hotel, no luggage-hauling.
- Give Brussels its time first, so you meet it on its own terms before Bruges’ postcard prettiness recalibrates your expectations.
The ideal version of our trip is basically the Brussels–Bruges–Ghent 3-day plan — Brussels base, Flemish day trips.
The case for using Brussels as a base rather than splitting your stay between multiple cities is partly logistical. You arrive, you unpack once, you learn where your café is and which streets lead where, you start to feel at home. Then each day trip to Bruges or Ghent is an adventure that returns you to a familiar base in the evening rather than to another set of check-in procedures. Belgium is small enough that this works perfectly: Bruges is under an hour from Brussels-Central, Ghent is thirty minutes. The SNCB fare is fixed and modest. You can book on the morning. There’s no reason to split your base unless you specifically want to spend the evenings in Bruges or Ghent rather than Brussels.
The single-base argument is also practical. Belgium is a small country with excellent trains; using Brussels as a hub means you can reach Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven as easy day trips, all on unfixed-fare trains you can book on the day. No luggage to move, no check-in and check-out at multiple hotels, and you get a single base you actually come to know. The tourism industry makes a lot of multi-city Belgium loops, but the hub-and-spoke model from Brussels is more comfortable and arguably gives you more.
The repeat visitor’s dilemma
One more scenario: you’ve already done Brussels once, properly, and you’re back. Does the order still matter? Less so. On a repeat visit, the “Bruges resets your expectations” problem doesn’t apply because you already know what Brussels is — you’re going back for the specific things you love, not discovering the city fresh. A repeat visitor can happily start in Bruges or Ghent without any risk of misreading Brussels afterwards, because the misreading only happens on first contact.
For the repeat visitor, the more interesting question is which parts of Belgium you haven’t yet seen. Ghent for the second visit if you only did Bruges the first time. Antwerp for the third — the fashion district, the cathedral, the station, the whole different energy of a larger Flemish city. Leuven and Mechelen if you want the quieter, less-visited Flemish alternatives. The radius from Brussels expands usefully with each return visit.
The takeaway
If you’re choosing the order: do Brussels first (or at least base there), and let Bruges be the day-trip treat. Bruges will still dazzle you whenever you go — but Brussels deserves to be met before, not after, the most photogenic small city in Europe resets your standards. Don’t make our mistake of nearly dismissing one of our now-favourite cities.
